Best Photos of 2017

National Geographic's 57 best images of the year—curated from 88 photographers, 112 stories, and nearly 2 million photographs.

4 Minute Read

PUBLISHED December 7, 2017

View Images

A tourist on a boat in Laguna San Ignacio reaches into the water in the hope of petting one of many gray whales that frequent the bay to mate and care for their young. Once feared by fishermen, the unusually friendly animals are now a crucial part of the economy.

As darkness falls on Guassa, geladas break into a run down a slope toward their sleeping cliffs. They will spend the night perched on narrow rocky ledges, trying to stay safe from leopards, hyenas, and feral dogs.

On a farm in Kentucky, Emma Langley, 13, Camille McCay, 10, and “Emerald” Shean, 10, play on a break from a daylong mother-daughter retreat to help girls understand and appreciate their bodies as they change with the onset of puberty.

Wearing a curtain and a cardboard crown, Kristina Khudi becomes the “tundra princess” in the Nenets camp near the Kara Sea. The eight-year-old says her happiest time is summer, when a helicopter sent by Gazprom and the regional government brings her and other kids home from school to their migrating families.

The Zetas hold on the state of Coahuila has been weakened, and nightlife has returned to Allende. Hundreds of people gathered last fall for the cabalgata, a festive cowboy parade that goes on for two to three days, stops at several ranches across the area, and ends with an evening rodeo.

In Seoul, e-stadiums and gaming parlors charge about a dollar an hour, and some venues are open around the clock. Soon after South Korea made super-high-speed Internet cheap and widely available, it became clear that some people were ruining their lives through obsessive game playing. The government now pays for treatment.

In 2011, the Zetas cartel, seeking revenge against members believed to be informants, rampaged through Allende and neighboring towns, killing dozens, and possibly hundreds. For this stricken community, the Day of the Dead holiday, when Mexicans honor their ancestors, has taken on extra poignancy.

In northern India the neem tree is known as the curer of all ailments and a manifestation of the Hindu goddess Shitala, a mother figure. To neighborhood residents who worship the tree at the Nanghan Bir Baba Temple, in Varanasi, it is that and more. The tree is dressed in cloth and wears a face mask of the goddess to strengthen the connection between her and worshippers.

Emperor penguins head for the open ocean in search of food. The brownish patches above them are microalgae that cling to the sea ice and start to photosynthesize in spring. The photographer’s day camp was on one of these floes. Aptenodytes Forsteri (penguins)

Geladas huddle for warmth. Getting enough calories from grass, herbs, and seeds takes a lot of work, so geladas spend most of their days scooting around on their buttocks. This frees up their hands to pluck more grass.

Photograph by Jeffrey Kerby and Trevor Beck Frost, National Geographic

View Images

Two marine iguanas seem unfazed by the presence of one of their mummified brethren, dead likely from starvation, on Isla Fernandina. Endemic to the Galápagos, these raccoon-size lizards forage for algae along the shore; larger males dive into the ocean. The algae they eat die in warm water, rendering Darwin’s “imps of darkness” susceptible to climate change.

A hunter carries the pelt of a mountain lion he shot this year in southern Utah. Winter is prime hunting season because the cats are easier to track on snowy ground. Each season the state sets a hunt quota, a number determined in part by how many livestock lions killed the year before. In 2016 they killed 416 sheep and other farm animals, and during the 2016-17 season hunters took 399 lions.

Mauli Dhan climbs a hundred feet up a bamboo rope ladder to his prize: a hive filled with neurotoxic honey. Smoke from smoldering grass disorients the bees, possibly reducing the number of stings Mauli will suffer. Before he grabs the support rope beside him, a misstep could be fatal.

Learning to lie is a natural stage in child development. Kang Lee, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, has explored how children become more sophisticated liars as they age. Darshan Panesar, a research assistant, and nine-year-old Amelia Tong demonstrate functional near-infrared spectro­s­copy technology, which Lee uses in his studies.

Nearly as tall as a giraffe and with the wingspan of an F-16 fighter, Quetzalcoatlus northropi was one of the largest flying animals of all time. This life-size model, being painted by Jim Burt at Blue Rhino Studio in Minneapolis, is bound for a cultural center in Kuwait.

Letting hummingbirds loose in wind tunnels allows researchers to probe the mechanics of flight at airspeeds of up to 35 miles an hour. This black-chinned hummingbird at the University of California, Riverside is part of an experiment testing whether aerial mating displays are a good representation of a bird’s physical abilities. In other words: Do the male birds that perform the most acrobatic dives to impress females also possess the ability to fly the fastest? For this photograph a fog of water vapor was added to make the wind movement visible. (Sources: Sean Wilcox and Christopher Clark)

Hippos, abundant in the delta and in the rivers that feed it, graze by night on land and rest by day in water. Males fight over territory, females protect their young—and their long, self-sharpening canine teeth can be lethal to intruders.

A 10-month-old jaguar cub is caught in the infrared beam of a camera trap as it returns to the safety of a tree in Brazil’s Pantanal region, the world’s largest tropical wetland and one of the last bastions for jaguars. Mothers coax cubs into climbing trees early on so they can learn to avoid predators.

It’s feeding time for hungry orphans at the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in northern Kenya. Established last year, the refuge is staffed by local Samburus, whose goal is to return their young charges to the wild.

A refugee stands on a plateau near her hut in a newly built part of Kutupalong camp. Most Rohingya who live in this section arrived recently, fleeing a campaign of terror in Myanmar launched by the military.

In a shelter in Vrindavan, known as a “city of widows,” Lalita (at right) bears the cropped hair and white wrap her culture once considered obligatory for widowhood. Shelter manager Ranjana, a much younger widow, is less constrained by traditional customs.

Two brothers and their brides wait to be married in a lavish ceremony at a wedding hall in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The city, now the country’s capital, was long a stopping place for camel caravans plying the Silk Road.

Aarti, nine, is vulnerable to sexual violence as she sells flowers alone on a rain-swept Delhi street. Despite the risk, millions of children around the world work to help support their families instead of attending school.

Drew Moore, 11, poses with his air gun collection in his bedroom, where the definition of a boy is stenciled on the wall. In his Arkansas community, hunting and manhood are entwined: “It’s not that we don’t like” men who don’t hunt, says his stepmom, Callie, “but we sure do like the ones who do.”

Assigned female at birth, Hunter Keith, 17, has felt himself to be a boy since fifth grade. By seventh grade he told his friends; by eighth grade he told his parents. Two weeks before this photo was taken, his breasts were removed. Now he relishes skateboarding shirtless in his Michigan neighborhood.

Outside a chicheria in Lamay, Peru, in the Sacred Valley of the Inca Empire, Lucio Chávez Díaz drinks a glass of chicha frutillada, a corn beer flavored with strawberries. The pure beers, wines, and spirits of today are a historical exception; alcoholic beverages have long been doctored with everything from pine needles to tree resins to honey.

Mark Landis, who says he was a failure as a commercial artist, spent nearly three decades imitating the works of famous painters, including this one in the style of folk artist William Matthew Prior. Posing as a philanthropist or Jesuit priest, he donated them to art museums and enjoyed being treated with respect. “I had never experienced this before, and I wanted it to go on,” he says. “I have no feelings of conscience about this. When I was exposed and had to stop, I was very sorry.”

At a Hindu temple near their home in Delhi, India, three generations of a family with albinism pose for a rare family portrait. When two people with albinism—a recessive genetic trait—have children, the children will have albinism.

The DMZ Peace Train carries South Korean soldiers and tourists from Seoul to train terminals closest to the DMZ. Each cabin has a different theme—peace, love, and harmony—which were designed to inspire feelings of hope and reconciliation.

The desire to teach their children about computers drew these Samburu women to a classroom in a settlement north of Nairobi. They are learning about tablets—designed to withstand tough use—that connect to the Internet through a satellite and come preloaded with educational programs. Technology now has arrived in isolated regions of Africa primarily in the form of relatively inexpensive cell phones.

After over two weeks without medication for kidney disease, Oseas Ríos was so weak he could hardly walk. Mediums who are adherents of the religious cult of María Lionza channel Viking spirits in a healing ceremony for him at the base of Sorte Mountain, near Chivacoa, Venezuela.

In 2016, with a yellow fever outbreak spreading from neighboring Angola and vaccine in short supply, health workers struggled to inoculate all 350,000 residents of the city of Matadi. Here they improvise a clinic in an abandoned truck.

After charities spent $28,000 to install a sewer line in Safeda Basti, 62 households constructed and connected private toilets, some of them on rooftops (bottom left). Without other plumbing, however, most residents must still haul water for flushing and handwashing from taps in the street.

Bare-knuckled and poised to punch, boys from the Venda tribe in Tshifudi, South Africa, engage in the boxing tradition known as musangwe. For boys as young as nine, it’s both an outlet for male energy and a check on aggression. Adults oversee the bouts to contain the violence.

Ethiopian Orthodox pilgrims celebrate Easter atop the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In a long dispute with Egyptian Copts, Ethiopian monks have occupied a rooftop monastery for more than 200 years to press their claim to a portion of the church.

Had Dian Fossey not so fiercely protected the gorillas and their habitat, these apes, resting on the high-elevation slopes of Mount Karisimbi, probably wouldn’t exist today. But her methods earned her the enmity of many locals.

A crested black macaque hangs out beachside in a nature reserve on Sulawesi. In studying these intriguing monkeys, known locally as yaki, scientists are learning how their social structure illuminates human behavior.

A curious young Weddell seal, weeks old, comes in for a close-up. It may have been the pups' first swim, says marine biologist Pierre Chevaldonné, who has worked at Dumont d’Urville. Weddell seals are the most southerly breeding mammal in the world.

“For a guy who is managed to the second and is always in suits and ties, being out in the middle of the ocean had to be a real treat,” says photographer Brian Skerry. He hopes this image of Barack Obama snorkeling will draw attention to ocean conservation efforts.

A great white shark swims in the Isla Guadalupe Biosphere Reserve, 160 miles off Baja California. As one of two places in the world where these sharks congregate in clear water, it’s a magnet for adventurous dive tourists. Ecotourism in Baja brings hundreds of millions of dollars to Mexico.

Writer Mark Synnott scales a cliff in Uzbekistan’s Boysuntov Range. Within this limestone wall lies a winding underworld. So far, eight missions have explored Dark Star. No one knows how far the cave extends.

Addiction hijacks the brain’s neural pathways. Scientists are challenging the view that it’s a moral failing and researching treatments that could offer an exit from the cycle of desire, bingeing, and withdrawal that traps tens of millions of people. Janna Raine became addicted to heroin two decades ago after taking prescription pain pills for a work injury. Last year she was living in a homeless encampment under a Seattle freeway.

Hummingbirds often brave downpours to gather the nectar needed to avoid starvation. This Anna’s hummingbird shakes off rain as a wet dog does, with an oscillation of its head and body. According to researchers at UC Berkeley, each twist lasts four-hundredths of a second and subjects the bird’s head to 34 times the force of gravity. (Sources: Victor Ortega-Jimenez and Robert Dudley)

Some Rohingya live outside the camps near Cox’s Bazar. This man lives in a settlement on the Bay of Bengal, near trees planted to prevent erosion and close to a hotel catering to tourists drawn by the beach.